


confessions in the dark

by ceremoany



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: F/M, Porn With Plot, [throws myself onto my bed] just give me their book already @ sjmaas, basically more mush than sex but like painful and angsty mush, kinda dark so beware
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:28:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21651499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceremoany/pseuds/ceremoany
Summary: “𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘨𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘮, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘦, 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘢𝘥𝘭𝘺, 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧.” — 𝙑𝙞𝙧𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙖 𝙒𝙤𝙤𝙡𝙛, 𝙉𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝘿𝙖𝙮
Relationships: Nessian, Nesta Archeron/Cassian
Comments: 9
Kudos: 84





	confessions in the dark

A small fire was ablaze at the back of Cassian’s throat every time he inhaled. 

Nesta had been marching north like a bat out of hell for the better part of the days light hours... Cassian leading the way. After refusing his diligent pleas to simply fly them both to the Illyrian mountains, his seeming acceptance and then attempted kidnapping, they began their journey. 

Nesta claimed if she had to be within five feet of him for more than a passing moment, blood would be shed, water supplies would be poisoned and villages would burn. After two bruises he could feel blooming slowly on his chest and collarbone, he let her have her way. 

“You’ll regret this, princess.” Cassian scoffed, somewhere at a crossroads between irritation and reverence. He spun on his heel and began towards the Illyrian Mountains. 

It had been nine hours since Nesta last opened her mouth. 

To make a remark, to sigh, to clear her throat. At first, Cassian assumed she was being quiet out of her own fury. Spilling over with anger, poisonous tongue pressed against the back of her teeth, conducting the perfect string of vulgarities harsh enough to make him stumble. Just venomous enough to seep through his leathers and start making it’s way into his chest, his lungs, his heart. Spreading the cold rot, emptying his insides, numbing him to prepare for her final strike. 

She trailed a dozen feet behind him but there was no need to stoke her fire. He could see her in his mind so viscerally that he needn’t look back. He imagined her pointed ears a burning pink and cheeks to match, the flush making her freckles blend into their background. Her dark eyebrows furrowed as usual, but deeper this time, making her look every bit the owner of the words she used as a whip. Full lips pulled down in defiance of this plan the Inner Circle had conspired. 

He waited for her anger to bubble up and over. To be her unfortunate victim. But the moment never came. Though they fell lightly, he could hear her obvious stomps into the deep snow. It was pillowy and light near the forrest’s of the Night Court, but the further they strayed, the more dense and unforgiving it became. Snow like this could be dangerous if you were alone. 

Her abhorrence to the idea of flying with him shouldn’t have affected him. He knew she was angry and oppositional to leaving her apartment, but this was her wish, and at the very least, he wanted let her chose the way she would begin upon this new path that had been cut out for her. All the same, he yearned to spare her from this long and exhausting voyage. 

But the moment of her unleashing hell upon him never arrived. Thoughts started to churn in Cassian’s head. He wanted to look back and chide her so she could let her emotions out. What he saw was not what he expected. Nesta’s pointed ears and cheeks were flushed, but so were her nose and chin. Her jaw was shaking, lips ashen. She watched her feet disappear into the snow with every step she took. Arms crossed around herself, she absentmindedly leaned her head upon her own shoulder. Cassian slowed and crossed the distance between them. 

“Hey... are you alright?” He began. 

Nesta feverishly shook her head as if to say yes. But there was no eye roll, no remark stating that she was perfectly fine, obviously. She was folding in on herself and if she knew it, there was no effort to try and straighten her spine to deceive him. 

That told him all he needed to know. They were done for the day. 

“Nesta. Look at me.” He left no room for the command to go unheard, voice steady and vociferous. 

Her eyes stayed fixed on the flat white of the snow. He slid his gloved hand under her small chin and ever so slowly, lifted her face until she met his eyes. 

Red rimmed, flat, tired. So unnaturally tired. Cassian shuttered, unnerved by the sight of her. To hell with her anger, wherever it may be at the moment. 

“Please don’t kill me, alright?” He said as he swept her up into his arms. There was no protest to be found from her. Nesta clung to his arms, letting her wind chapped face fall against the leathers stretched across his chest. 

The beating of his wings lifted the newer snow off the surface of the winter floor. Normally Nesta would chastise Cassian for seemingly showing off, but it was as if she couldn’t begin to stop herself as she drank in the sight of the flakes glistening in the twilight, suspended around them. 

It was beautiful. Her eyes fluttered shut. 

“Tip toes.” Cassian told Nesta as he prepared to let her out of his grasp and onto the stone steps of the Inn. Her boots were still caked with snow after the flight but she did as she was told, toes of the clunky boots touching the floor first. 

The tavern attached to the Inn was bustling with life. Yellow light shone bright on the snow, figures dancing in the windows. The only surprise to be had about the liveliness was that the night was fairly young. Music thrummed through the air and carried the promise of warmth with it. 

“Listen, I’m going to go get us a room. I’d prefer for you to come with me but I’d understand if you would want to go sit down and get something to drink.” Cassian said. 

Nesta was wandering to the bar with a glassy look in her eyes before he was even done with his sentence. 

—————

Cassian sat down at the table hard enough to make the log bench creak under the stress of the abrupt pressure. 

Nesta’s eyes stared blankly into her cup of warm ale.

“The things I’ve done for that bōsa ruaka and he can’t spare a bigger room...” Cassian cupped his hand over the rim of the mug, steam unfurling between his fingers. “Nesta... let me take you to the room... just to get you settled in and out of your wet clothes, then I can bring you up some food... Does that sound alright?” Worry seeped into his voice with each syllable. 

“I’ve never heard you use Illyrian before.” She said. 

Cassian’s eyes widened briefly, taken off guard. “Certain circumstances call for insults that women shouldn’t have the displeasure of knowing.” 

“Say something else.” 

“Hae mazvēttan va byka riñar.” His first language rolled off his tongue with the familiarity that always made him long for Illyrian food and the sound of wind whipping through redwood trees. 

Nesta lifted an eyebrow in question. 

“It means get your ass upstairs. Now.” He growled. 

“You lie.” Her eyes narrowed to slits. He should have known better than to think that she couldn’t pick out a lie he told like a pin in a haystack. The thought unnerved him.

“Do I?” And with that, Cassian stood, bench rocking behind his knees. Nesta followed in silence as they left the tavern and reached the end of the small Inn hall. Cassian opened the door to reveal a simple room. It was clean and warm and the fireplace was already ablaze with fresh logs. It was small, though, small enough to where it could only accompany one bed. 

There was still silence, but it shifted. It grew thick and muggy, as if you could run your finger through the air and see the pattern of where you had touched. 

“I’ll sleep on the floor, it makes no difference to me, but I should knock Velda’s head into a tree for not having the new wing done yet. People are always scrambling for rooms here...” His voice melted away into the tension in the room. The silence shifted again, changing. 

“I’m... going to get your food.” Nesta almost huffed a laugh at that. She stripped out of her stiff wet clothes and put on a still cold, but dry set of pajamas. She proceeded to sit in the middle of the bed and bunched the blankets around her shoulders and over the top of her head. She let out a wavering sigh. The room was warm but she couldn’t seem to shake this layer of slick frost that lay over her entire body, her mind, her mouth. 

Cassian returned with food that seemed somewhat edible. She drank the watery and salty broth from the soup and picked out the leaves to eat, leaving the pieces of pink rabbit meat at the bottom of the bowl. She gnawed on a piece of sourdough bread as she stared at Cassian eating. You’d think he was starved, living in the mountains for months, surviving on only the hearts of small birds and sour berries from weakling bushes. 

“Do I amuse you?” He questioned.

“You fascinate me.” Cassian was positive that was sarcasm and despite the layers of hard armor he installed over his heart in the woods, the humid room rusted the chain mail. The way Nesta’s skin seemed to glow under the warm light, soft and pearlescent, reduced the brackets on the plates to melted iron. The way her voice was a little raspy, cracked at the beginning of every sentence she said made the leather holding the amor in place rip and fray. The way this girl, this woman, who was the most magnetic force he had ever encountered, who gave Amren a run for her money, who took a piece of the cauldron out of pure spite, who was nearly divine... it made his heart, free from the protection of armor, thrum erratically, uneven, taking on the beat of a hummingbird’s heart. 

Cassian’s leathers repelled water and snow alike but he had slept in the stiff bodysuit too many times, and he just wanted to feel soft cotton against his skin for a night. 

He emerged from the wash room as Nesta was playing with her fingers, twisting them about, creating steeples and dismounting them. 

“Cassian.” Her voice was small. Sleepy. Vulnerable. He felt like a God had granted him some wish he didn’t even know he had been praying for. “You can sleep in the bed. Not that you weren’t ever allowed to, I just don’t want you on the floor and I feel like you’re a hot sleeper and I still feel so cold...” 

She blinked up at him. He didn’t realize his chest was rising up and down much quicker than it should be. 

“Nesta... I don’t want to make you uncomfortable...” Cassian murmured. 

“Get in the bed,” She tried to harden her voice but still it cracked. “Please.” 

A “please” from Nesta Archeron. This was absolutely a blessing from somewhere above. 

Before Cassian could even worry about being too close or too far away, Nesta’s body nudged against him. She folded her leg over his thigh and rested her forehead on the side of his ribcage. A shaky hand tried to settle itself on his sternum. 

“Not so fast...” She started drumming her fingers softly to the rhythm. Cassian was as still as stone. Unable to oblige. He slowly folded his arms around her. 

“Are you feeling better?” He whispered.   
He was terrified of speaking too loudly, ruining this moment. His thoughts were fluttering erratically above his head, too frantic to be contained, they started crumpling, one after another with the weight of tension in the room. They fell in the air slowly, freckling his face, the pillow, Nesta’s hair. 

“No... I can’t tell... That’s the problem, Cassian.” She whispered back. He could feel her her warm breath on his side when she spoke. “I can’t feel anything. After everything was said and done, after the Cauldron reformed itself again, my mind has locked me out. I’ve been evicted. I’m caught in the labyrinth outside of the castle. Wandering through it aimlessly, too tired to run through the hedges that make up the maze. I can’t think correctly, I can’t remember anything, I can’t access any form of power, I can’t do anything but sleep. I can’t tell if I’m trying to protect myself from all of the trauma I’ve endured, the reformation, the horrible noises, the loss... or if the part of the Cauldron I took has also reformed itself... maybe it’s both, maybe it’s neither. All I know is that I am so tired of being tired. I’m so tired of this nothingness. How can I go on if this is all there is? I cannot... everyday is the same bleakness, this grey fog lingers over everything, it’s so palpable I swear I can run my finger through it like dust on a mantle. No matter what I do, I can’t find my way back.” 

Cassian wasn’t expecting that. Not a single part of it. He processed every word and every affliction that had run through her voice while she said it. The room was quiet for a long while. The distant sounds of drunken fae at the tavern dwindled until there was no noise besides that of the snow falling. 

Nothingness. 

Cassian repositioned himself in the bed until he was sitting, then he pulled Nesta into his lap. Her head lulled, eyes wanting to focus anywhere but into those of whom she had just confessed her fragility to. It settled between his chest and arm. She tucked her face into him and let out a huff. 

“Look at me.” He said. Stern. Unwavering in the face of her fog. A lighthouse in the ebb and flow of the storm. 

Nesta’s limbs tightened as she tried to burrow further into Cassian’s side. 

“Nesta.” 

She just huffed into his side yet again with the tiniest shake of her head. 

“Always so stubborn...“ Cassian sighed. He ran his fingers through the back of her hair, getting lost in the amber sea of turns and tangles.

“Nesta…” Only a whisper this time. Nesta turned her face towards Cassian reluctantly, eyebrows pulled together in as much anger as she was capable of presenting, lips thinned, eyes glassy with unshed tears. 

Cassian took in the girl before him, the one who was once all rage and shriek and flame. She is in there. Resting, deep within herself. Light blazing at the bottom of her black sea, currents waning, but there; like the stillness before a storm that makes history with its level of destruction. He wants to dive below her surface to rescue that piece of her but there’s a thick layer of ice overtop of the water. Unforgiving and ominous. 

He has to melt that layer of ice. If he can melt it, he can swim below the surface; however long it takes. Lungs burning, heart throbbing, muscles straining, none of it would matter once the bottom was reached. Everything would be worth it to restore what she has lost. 

That begged the question; was there a bottom to Nesta? Or was there only endless sea and dark weather that never cleared, only turned to sleet and snow with the seasons? He didn’t care. He wanted her storm to consume him. Let him never be seen again, it would be a blessing to be swept up into the dance of her winds. 

“Tell me how to help you.” Cassian murmured, fingers lifting to brush the side of her cheek. Gentle, as if adding the finishing touches to a painting. 

Nesta’s mouth opened but no sound came out and she closed it again. Flames ignited further in Nesta’s cheeks and raced down her neckline to her collarbones. A forest fire, untamable and quick moving. 

Cassian studied the way her nose crinkled and her eyes screwed shut, frustration clear on her soft face. He was about to ask her again, desperate to appease her, growing more and more frantic to soothe her when a tendril of understanding stretched between them, a whisper of a thing but there. Cassian reached out, tried to grasp that line of unspoken communication, of something more, glimmering gold beneath the smoke of its shape, but each time he tried to graze it, it moved just out of his reach, curling back towards Nesta. 

He almost thought he imagined it. Almost. He took Nesta in as he brushed her cheek again and he could see, feel, her shallow breaths. Her hips shifted and her knees brought closer to her chests. Fingers curled into her palms to make small fists. Eyes darkened. 

“I just want to feel something.” She ground out.

“Vala noira…” The Illyrian slipped out of him like a shadow. God’s above. “Show me... how I can help you.” Cassian’s voice was barely there, cracking and caving in on itself. “I want to... I need to help you, Nesta. Please let me do this for you.” 

Nesta dragged in a shaky breath and closed her eyes. Tears gathered between her lashes, glistening in the warm light. She reached for Cassian’s hand, his fingers stilled on her cheek. Nesta pulled it down to her waistline, pausing only once. Cassian’s hand rested on Nesta’s waist for a long moment. Both heartbeats in the room flitting around the other. One beat and another trying to chase it. His fingers were shaking on her skin and he thought maybe she trembled beneath him as he did above her. 

Cassian leaned down to press his forehead against hers. She opened her eyes and it was as if he had fallen into her pupils, blown out and dark, consuming everything around her. 

“Are you sure about this?” Cassian knew the answer. He could smell her arousal, concentrated and thick around them. Her body arched upwards, towards him as if he were her puppeteer, string tied around her sternum. Her breathing fell slow and deep now, yearning. Waiting. 

“Please... I just want to feel something.” She repeated. “I just want to feel something.” 

Cassian nodded quickly, before lifting his head and pressing his lips to the top of Nesta’s head. His eyes stung and he stayed there until he could open them without the threat of any betrayal of wetness. His face moved throughout her hair until he settled into the crook of her neck, breathing in her scent. Burnt sugar, cream, and black tea intoxicated him. Strands of her hair brushed against his lips. 

“Anything for you.” Cassian murmured. It was another promise. He’d spend all of them on her, no matter the circumstance. 

Cassian inched his mouth closer to Nesta’s throat until he found his target. Right below her ear, he brushed against it with his tongue like all those months ago. Nothing had changed. Nesta’s body ignited, breath coming in faster, body liquefying in his arms. Cassian felt himself harden and cursed the position they were in, sure that if she didn’t feel it now, a slight dip of her hips in his lap would expose his traitorous body to her. 

This was about her. He was doing this for her, not unlike everything else he had done since that day in the mortal lands when he had first met her. 

His tongue made quick work of her neck. She tasted sweet and he couldn’t get enough, struggling against the prospect of losing himself in this task completely. Adrenaline and purpose combined to stop his shaking and he moved a hand to her hair, tugging it softly, tilting her head further back to gain more access to more of her neck. Her skin was like silk under his mouth. 

The hand resting on Nesta’s waist began to move, ever so slowly. He didn’t mean to try to torture her. He was trying to give her enough time to shove him off of her and put an end to all of this if she sees fit. 

Fingers dipped under the band of Nesta’s underwear. He stroked the skin beneath the fabric lazily. Nesta’s legs fell apart, as if her muscles had given out all the sudden, completely spent by being stretched so taunt for so long. He smiled against her neck, not picturing Nesta to be quite so eager. Her head snapped up in response to feeling his lips curve against her neck. 

Her eyes were big and glassy in the firelight, half intoxicated on pleasure, but something was wrong. The way her brows were arched, up at the fronts and the tail ends pointing downward, like she was a small child, being made a joke by a school bully. Cassian’s heart swelled and both his hands immediately went to her face, thumbs ready to catch tears if they fell. 

“Are you okay?” His voice cracking and desperate. “What did I do? What can I do to fix it?” His eyes searched hers, trying desperately to read was wrong. Her chin was wobbling and he felt the ricochet in his chest. 

Cassian was a fixer. He fixed people’s problems, their wounds, their hearts, their door frames and broken sword hilts. It’s what he had always been best at. Alongside killing. He could put something together just as well as he could take it apart, although he liked the former the best out of the two. Cassian came from ashes, rubble, nothing. Broken things. He longed to fix for others what he could not fix within himself. 

His thumb rested under her quivering chin and lifted her face up fraction more. Her own hands went to cover what was left of her face that his didn’t. 

“I don’t… I just don’t want you to laugh at me. I know I shouldn’t be ashamed of my own desire but there’s something different about doing this with you. I fear I will make a fool of myself.” Nesta shook her head, at a loss for words. Bits of her sentences hung around the room, heavy as honeyed baby’s breath. 

Again, he gave a moment before he replied. So terrified of her recoiling whilst so close to him. He could endure it when she coldly withdrew from him while he was across the room, but to feel her body tense with disgust, her hands grasping for anything to get her further away from him… he thought it might crack his ribs in two, heart and all of its desires, wishes, hopes, pouring onto the cold floor. 

He didn’t know if it would be worth it to put them back this time. 

He mulled over the words like one would a spiced wine at a Seelie harvest festival. 

“Nothing you do could ever do would make me turn away from you. Not in repulsion, not in humility, not in uninterest.” The words caught in his chest. He wasn’t sure he was even hearing them as they flit past his lips. 

“Gods, Nesta, You are haunting. You are magnificent. You are made of power and fire and fury. Every thread in the fabric that weaves who you are, it’s all enchanted. The way that you think I could ever be shaken from you when my entire existence longs to be wrapped up in you… it’s just not plausible…” 

Nesta peered through he fingers before removing her hands from her face. Tears slid down her cheeks and onto Cassian’s awaiting fingers. 

“I’m terrified that if I go on, I will scare you away…” Cassian didn’t realize his voice had risen so high, now it was cascading back down into a whisper. 

Before Cassian could process what was happening, Nesta’s mouth was on his. She was frantic and soft at the same time. He melted into the chaos that she was unleashing, lips opening when hers did. She grabbed at his hair as if trying to pull his face closer and closer yet. Cassian’s hand pushed at her hip as the other stayed on the side of her face. He realized within seconds that he was grounding her, so afraid that if he wasn’t holding her down, she would float away. He felt the clang of emptiness inside of her, her chest as hollow as a pin pricked egg. 

This moment is a high fever that would break, but he will make her delirious with pleasure for as long as he had. 

Her scent was overpowering, overwhelming. Sickly sweet, mouthwatering, like walking past a bakery after you’d woken too late for breakfast and too busy for lunch. Cassian’s head swam through the sweetness, trying to grasp onto centuries of training to barely, just barely repress a groan. 

The soft pads of his fingertips brushed her folds, warm and slick with arousal. Every instinct in Cassian’s head, body, soul, existence, screamed at him to bury himself in her. When his willpower held, that urge begged him, pleaded with him. He wrapped that tendril of willpower around the ancient instinct, smothering it’s fire. 

It is known that Fae have wicked desires and are insatiable with lust. For Illyrians, it is that, but there are old customs, rituals and beliefs. They crave and court like any other Fae, but their purpose is to breed. To grow the branches of existing family trees, to grow their militia. Family is honor and strength comes in numbers. The two go hand in hand. The stars hang heavy over their mountains with the constellations of fertility and good health. The sky is sluggish there, almost as if it were a living thing, blood thick from cold. The stars are unmoving in the North. It is why the first Illyrians planted their roots there, why they haven’t moved since. It is not easy terrain to travel over, nevertheless make your home. 

Nesta bucked her hips, trying to find purchase of something she could grind against for relief. Cassian wouldn’t encourage this cheap shot behavior, no matter if this was for her or not. 

“Stop doing that. You’re making yourself flustered,” He said, voice clear and loud. “I will make you feel good, but I can hardly do that when you’re writhing around like a cat in the Springtime. Although, I am flattered—”

“Shut up!” Nesta groans, pink becoming her once more. “You said—” 

Cassian’s fingers sunk into her in earnest. He’s spent the two digits to the hilt. They gasped in tandem, rough and grappling. If Nesta was unspun before, she had weaved more thread to spin and immediately unspin. Cassian wasted no time, he didn’t want her to have time to adjust. His fingers curled and straightened, a small and slight movement. They shared white spots in their vision, as if someone held a party sparkler between them. 

Nesta’s thin fingers grasp at bedsheets, balling them in her fists before letting them go and going it all over again. Anything for purchase, anything to ground her. Cassian is as still as a statue despite his arm, gently rocking between her legs. His eyelids hang heavy, as though his lashes were drenched in nectar. His gaze is fixed on her face and he doesn’t bother with airs as he drinks her in greedily. 

Her lips are parted into a loose O, wet with frequent swipes of her tongue. Her eyes are screwed shut and her brows are pulled together once more. 

She’s a mess, a tragedy that poets could only dream of being able to write about. The grandeur of her is overwhelming. Cassian can feel his heart being covered in the thick velvet fabric of her emotions. They conform to the chasms and angles as he vows to himself, in that moment, that he would absorb this darkness of hers. If he cannot bear the weight of it all, then enough to lift the veil obstructing her line of sight back to herself.

He could never fix her, he could never guide her back to herself with the romantic grasp of his hand and copious amounts of sweet words. No, he couldn’t do that, but he would hold her in the night, talk her down from the end of a blade pointed inward, whilst she learned to love herself. 

Let his love be the guardrail on the edge, be the safe that holds all of the dangerous things, be the one that puts her back together after a bad night, or day, week or year. 

Cassian realizes the weight of this vow. It incorporates itself into his blood, making it hum with another purpose. He’s dizzy and disoriented but he kisses her again. It’s something new, desperate and hungry and full of something he is denying still. 

His fingers leave the inside of her and she whines with the loss of it against Cassian’s lips. Her complaints don’t last long before soft moans spill from her mouth anew with the circling of his fingers around her swollen clit. 

“Stars, Nesta, you’re so wet.” He manages to get out. He can feel her heartbeat dancing on his fingers. “And so warm.” 

Nesta pulls back and opens her eyes to look at him. Her gaze is soft, eyes fluttering and wide, like she’s a doe in the middle of a meadow. Cassian knows better. 

He sinks two fingers back into her and occupies her bud of nerves with his thumb. 

“Cassian,” his name coming from her mouth in this state is ethereal. It cloys in his ears and overwhelms him. She looks at him through long lashes, barely able to keep her eyes open against the rhythmic curling of his fingers inside of her. 

“Cassian,” she repeats and he cannot believe that he’s here with her in this moment, like this is ceremonial and he is unworthy of attending such an event. 

What if he fell or got sick during their hike up to the Illyrian mountains? What if he’s lying on his sickbed, twisted up his sheets from writhing around in pain, hot with infection? 

If this is all a fever dream, so be it. 

“I… I’m,” The words were quiet, and she didn’t get far with what she was trying to say. He knew what she meant. He could feel the muscles around his fingers grip him tighter. It made it harder for him to keep angling them to rub against that one spot inside of her, so he brushed his thumb in quicker strokes over her clit. Soft moans blossoming into quick gasps. 

Cassian cradled the back of her head and brought it against his chest, her cheek pressed against his bare skin. Her fingers freed from the sheets and found purchase in his hair, tangled in his roots, tugging absentmindedly against the pull of her climax. Cassian moaned aloud in response to that. His head fell back in bliss as pain blossomed across his scalp. 

Nesta’s legs were trembling as her pleasure collapsed in upon itself.

“Cassian, Cassian, Cassian.”

He was still so unsure of if he was really hearing it. In that moment, he felt as if he could give her his life, his heart, his soul, hidden delicately under thick, waxy wrapping paper with a silk bow ornamenting the top of his existence. 

I love you. I love you. I love you. He mouthed the words into her hair as her body relaxed, melting back into his lap. 

They sat like that for a long while. Their breath had long since been caught. Nesta’s arms draped over his shoulders lazily, her forehead pressed against his chest. 

Cassian’s fingers were still inside of her. He didn’t want to remove them from her, but he did anyways. Small gasps fell from Nesta’s mouth as he left her while she was so swollen and sensitive. He pulled up the front of her underwear softly and smoothed the band with his thumb. 

“Are you okay?” He whispered. 

“I think I am. Now, at least…” She whispered back. “Thank you. I…” The words had gotten lost somewhere between thought and admittance.

Cassian lifted her face towards hers with the back of his hand under her chin. Her eyes were sleepy and wet and beautiful. 

“One day at a time, baby.” He said. Nesta’s rolled her eyes at the at the nickname he used for her, but her lips pulled upwards at the corners anyways. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” 

And he did. He always did.


End file.
